US transfers Guantanamo Bay detainees to Kenya and Malaysia

(CNN) — The US has moved detainees from the military prison at Guantanamo Bay to Kenya and Malaysia, the Pentagon announced this week.

Mohammed Abdul Malik Bajabu was transferred to Kenya nearly three years after a Periodic Review Board determined the “continued law of war detention … was no longer necessary” in December 2021, a release from the Pentagon said on Tuesday, marking the first detainee transfer in more than a year. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin notified Congress about his intent to transfer Bajabu to Kenya in November. He was never charged with a crime.

Bajabu had been detained since 2007, Mark Maher, a staff attorney for the human rights group Reprieve US who represented him, told CNN last year. According to Department of Defense filings, Bajabu was a facilitator for al Qaeda in East Africa before he was detained.

Additionally, two detainees have been repatriated to Malaysia, the Pentagon said Wednesday.

Mohammed Farik bin Amin and Mohammed Nazir bin Lep pled guilty to war crimes for an affiliate of al Qaeda that carried out attacks on Bali in 2002 and a 2003 attack on the J.W. Marriott hotel in Jakarta, the US Department of Defense said in a statement.

The two men were returned to Malaysia in accordance with pre-trial agreements and had cooperated with the US government in providing testimony against Encep Nurjaman, the statement said. Nurjaman is alleged to have been a leader in Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), the Southeast Asian militant network blamed for the deadly Bali bombings, according to a 2021 Defense Department statement announcing charges against him and the two men.

The al Qaeda-linked militant group is accused of orchestrating some of the deadliest attacks in Indonesia, including the 2002 bombing of Bali nightclubs that killed more than 200 people and the 2003 bombing of the JW Marriott hotel in Jakarta that killed 12 people.

The last detainee transfer occurred in April 2023, when a 72-year-old al Qaeda associate was transferred to Algeria after more than 20 years of detention at Guantanamo.

President Joe Biden made it an early goal of his administration to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, also known as GTMO, but the US made only marginal progress in moving the prisoners held there over the last four years. The facility held about 40 detainees at the start of the Biden administration.

As of Wednesday, 27 detainees remain at Guantanamo Bay, the Pentagon said. According to the Pentagon’s release, 29 detainees remain at the military prison — 15 of whom are eligible to be transferred out. Among those remaining are three alleged 9/11 conspirators whose plea deals are at the center of an ongoing dispute between the Pentagon and the military judge over the validity of said deals.

President Barack Obama also promised to shut down Guantanamo when he campaigned for office, setting up the office of military commissions and the Periodic Review Board system during his tenure, but he failed to close the prison during his eight years in office.

During President-elect Donald Trump’s first term in office, he signed an executive order in January 2018 to keep the facility open, reversing Obama’s policy. Trump also raised the prospect of additional prisoners being held at the facility as part of his decision.

“The United States may transport additional detainees to US Naval Station Guantanamo Bay when lawful and necessary to protect the Nation,” the order said.

Originally opened in 2002, the facility was meant to be a place where suspects in the war on terror could be interrogated. But prisoners have been indefinitely detained, and as the US war on terror dragged on, the detention facility became an international symbol of US rights abuses in the post-9/11 era.

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